A Melodramatic Affair
by ClassicalStars
Summary: They say love is always in the least expected of places. Mina Scotts wants a promotion. James wants more freedom. They both want to be happy. [James II/OC]


The queue system in the Owl Post Office barely existed. Not many modern witches and wizards found themselves without an owl these days. The most activity was always at midday when darling old witches and lovely senior wizards would show up to send their friends letters. The older the customer, the more time it takes to count out each and every coin-some would even attempt to haggle. Which is why Mina Scotts hated her job. At least this job.

Her other job was much more pleasant. Working in Eeylops Owl Emporium and Magical Menagerie part time barely made enough money to cover her half of the rent. Sooner or later, one of her co-workers will quit and she'll snatch up their full time position, leaving the awful Post Office and its constant smell of ink behind.

Mina rested against the counter, wishing her muggle smartphone worked properly within Diagon Alley. Something about it messed with the circuits. She distracted herself from idle boredom with this week's Witching Word Search. It lasted seven days and was enchanted to constantly reshuffle and hide new words.

There was a light tingling sound throughout the storefront as an elderly witch waltzed in. She oozed an air of superiority and had a scowl as deep as a ravine on her face. She slid in front of Mina who hurried to put her puzzle away or else suffer the Wrath™ of a grumpy old witch and put on her brightest smile. Who needs lumos when you have a kilowatt smile?

"Hello, how can I help you today?" Mina asked.

The woman looked at her with suspicion. "I need to send a letter to my grandson."

There was a thud as the woman all but slammed the letter on the table. It was a sharp black envelope with silver letters written with enough curls and flicks to come off as pretentious. Mina widened her smile.

"Certainly. How far will the owl be travelling?" she asked, making her way over to the owl cages behind the counter.

"He lives in Essex," said the woman, the place name rolling off her tongue in disgust. Mina could sense the disapproval over her grandson's choice of place of residence.

After selecting the correct owl and attaching the letter to it's leg, Mina collected the payment and bid the customer goodbye. She then took the owl out of the shop front and to the back section so the bird could start it's delivery. Mina savoured the minutes she had to herself before going back to the front of the store.

A new customer came through the door almost as soon as she got to her word search. She looked up and started to smile before realising it was just Scorpius Malfoy.

"Scorpius," she said, wearing the first genuine smile she's had all day. "What can I do for you?"

"My dad sent me a parcel and it's here to pick up," he said and leaned against the counter.

The blonde blew hair out of his face and wore an almost bemused smirk on his face. He wore sharp black robes and Mina could smell his cologne faintly in the air. He was a huge dork at Hogwarts but Mina was reminded of the crush she had had on him for two years driving her insane. When Albus Potter found out, she had to bribe him with her best sweets to get him to keep his mouth shut. Eventually, Mina decided she didn't like Scorpius but the idea of someone just being nice to her.

"Right, I'll go see about that," she said and turned to the many square shelves and looking through the stacks of parcels for his name. "Haven't seen you in a while. You should come round for drinks sometime. I know Albus would love that. He's been sick for days."

"Then I can't imagine drinks would be the brightest idea for him," Scorpius commented. "But yeah, I should come round."

"I got this really nice wine in. I know you like red. Apparently it's about a century old. It was a gift from my auntie," she said, moving stacks of parcels aside.

There was silence for a few minutes. "Why do you work here?" he asked her.

"Pays the bills," Mina said bluntly, turning to look at him. Just then her eye spies a small parcel with the Malfoy family crest on it sitting just below the counter. "Ah! Found it."

She pulled the parcel up to the counter and removed the receipt from the string wrapped around it. She offered him a quill to sign it with. Once his fancy signature was on the dotted line, the receipt flew off the counter and impaled itself on a needle in the backroom. The quill waltzed back to it's stand, waiting it's next use.

"You got an O in Potions and you're wasting your time in here," Scorpius told her as he unwrapped the parcel. "I'm serious, you could be a Potioneer and you're wasting your time catering to people like me."

"You're the least of my problems when it comes to customers," Mina shrugged. She leaned on the counter and watched the window over his shoulder.

"What did Father Dearest send you?" she asked.

Scorpius picked up the box and emptied it. A small crystal ball with a bronze handle rolled onto the counter. His smirk had turned to a scowl. "A rememberall."

"Nice... What did you forget?"

"I didn't forget. I avoided," he said and pushed it over the counter. "Here, you can have it. Maybe you'll remember your ambition. Not very Slytherin of you to give up on that anyway."

"Oh thanks," Mina hissed, not touching the rememberall. "What did you avoid?"

"My grandfather's birthday," Scorpius said and the matter dropped as soon as that.

Mina knew it was a bad idea to talk about the less than desirable members of the Malfoy family. Scorpius once hexed a man in the Three Broomsticks for trying to compare him to his grandfather in looks. He's been banned ever since and this incident when he was sixteen.

"Well... Uh..." Mina said, struggling to come up with something else to talk about.

"I'll be round tonight. I suddenly have a free spot in my schedule. My father just cancelled my appearance at family dinner," Scorpius said and looked outside. It was just beginning to rain so he brought his wand and cast a quick water repellant charm on himself. "You really can have the rememberall. See you at about seven or eight."

"Alright then. See you later," Mina said and waved him goodbye.

Once he was gone, she pulled the rememberall over to herself. No smoke appeared in her hand and she was satisfied she hadn't forgotten anything. Of course, a part of her wondered if she had and somehow this confounded the rememberall. She had a knack for breaking toys like this one.

She set it under the counter and began to get back to work with her wordsearch.

* * *

Albus looked a lot less than half dead by the time Scorpius came knocking. He had managed to contract a magical strain of the flu and had to be cordoned off magically until it was no longer contagious. He was still recovering from the effect it had had on his body, however.

Still, he pushed up his glasses and smiled at his best friend in the doorway. "Scorpius! Mina had said you were coming. You're a bit early, mate."

"Yeah, well I had nothing else to do. Is she not back yet?" Scorpius added, slightly puzzled when he realised Mina wasn't on her usual spot at the sofa.

"Nah, she's probably on her way, though," Albus said and shut the door behind the blonde. "My brother's supposed to be coming at some point as well. Said he has some sort of news."

The pair just regarded each other awkwardly.

"Right. Let's see what's on tv," Albus said, waving the remote at Scorpius.

By the time Mina got home, the boys were practically having a slumber party in the living room. She ogled them, a slice of pizza from the box she was carrying dangling from her teeth and the toppings sliding precariously downwards.

The boys had dragged Albus' duvet and pillows in, sitting in front on the floor and looking up at the television like children. Scorpius had even borrowed an old t-shirt of Albus' and some tracksuit bottoms. Albus held a bowl of popcorn in his hands and his head swivelled at the smell of the pizza. Both boys looked like idiots to Mina.

"Mina!" Albus greeted.

"Were you about to braid each other's hair?" Mina asked, taking the pizza from her mouth and putting the box on the coffee table.

Albus was upon the box like a vulture.

"Why would we do that?" Scorpius asked, eyes glued to the screen.

Mina didn't answer and shrugged off her coat, putting it on the coat rack near the door and being mindful of the pizza slice. She then went to the kitchen and put the slice on a plate before going off to get changed in her room. She didn't know why the boys had decided on what was essentially a sleepover but she wasn't going to complain. After the day she had had at work, she welcomed a chance to let her hair down and be just a little bit childish.

Upon getting back to the living room, she got the wine out of the fridge and enchanted some wine goblets to follow her through to the boys. She handed each one a goblet and then spelled the bottle to allow for better pouring.

Once she was settled, she looked at the tv. The boys had been watching cartoons- old 90s cartoons with terrible quality and strange voice dubbing. The lips never seemed to match up to what they were saying. Still, having not grown up with cartoons on Saturday mornings, the boys were drawn to cartoons. She had half a mind to introduce them to the more adult cartoons she had seen growing up. Darla by YTV had always been a favourite of hers when she was home from school in her teen years. They would show reruns of the early 2000s classic in the evenings. Her father had given her similar adoration for an older 70s cartoon called Risk Rat which was somewhat based on a famous spy novel series- only with anthropomorphic animals instead.

The boys seemed content on their generic superhero cartoon, however.

"If you keep watching too long, your eyes will go square," she warned Scorpius, who still had yet to look away. She was almost certain he was about to start drooling.

He finally tore his gaze away to look at her as if she had two heads. "What on earth does that mean?"

"It's an old wives tale. It's not true, of course, but still," she said, not caring to elaborate further. "It is kind of rude to not even look at your hostess."

"Why suddenly so posh?" Albus asked, stringing the lukewarm mozzarella cheese from the tip of his pizza around his finger. "Why are you only now a hostess and all the other times, just our Mina?"

Mina couldn't answer.

Scorpius quickly changed topics. "How's the family, Al?"

Albus gave a sharp breath. "Big, loud and famous. Same as always. James is coming by later. Said he needed some space from responsibility."

"I'd kill for his pay," Mina sighed, downing her glass of wine and watching the bottle refill it.

Albus raised an eyebrow at her. Both boys had come from money as well as wizarding families. Mina had come from a borderline breadline family that was awash with muggles. Mina and her brother had grown up with magic but in a family where magic was now a heavily guarded secret. As a result, she had found it hard to find her feet when it came to finding a decent job that would have her. Her NEWTs were good but she was too generalised for some jobs she had fancied.

"I bet your next shift at Eeylops will make you feel better," Albus told her in earnest. "All the cats there seem to adore you."

"That's just treating them nicely," Mina said, shrugging.

About an hour of chatter passes between the friends before there was a knock at the door and a tired looking James Potter II allowed himself in. He was dishevelled and smirking as always. He oozed an atmosphere of good humour and looked sharp in his well-tailored robes. He flopped down beside Albus, breaking the image of a mature adult with everything together.

"If I have to sign my name one more time, I might actually hex someone," he said, practically draping on his brother.

Ever the Drama Queen™.

"And here I thought you'd never tire of signing autographs," Scorpius grinned.

Mina stayed quiet. It wasn't that she didn't like James, just that she had no idea how to talk to him at times. He seemed from a totally different world than Albus.

Albus was ambitious and liked to work his way up from nothing. He had insisted on starting from the bottom rung at his job at the Ministry. He earned just about more than Mina but he was happy with his progression. Unfortunately, he would constantly pick up a new hobby. He was thankfully between hobbies at the moment.

James, on the other hand, was used to flitting between things and never staying still. His job was the longest thing he had had associated to him since Hogwarts. He had followed in his mother's footsteps, going into professional Quidditch. He had actually gotten a reputation for not staying on one team for very long.

For brothers, they really seemed different.

"You said you had news?" Albus asked his brother.

"I did? Oh! I did," James said, helping himself to pizza. "I'm moving to the Chudley Cannons for the next season. It's going to be announced tomorrow in the papers."

"I'll never understand why everyone's so bothered by who plays for what team. I mean, it's just a sport," Mina said, flicking her wand to summon another glass for James. She ignored the scandalised expressions from her friends.

He caught it and held it up to the wine bottle.

"I don't like being held down by one team," he said nonchalantly.

"Well, in any case, congratulations?" Scorpius asked.

The four clinked their glasses together. "Cheers."


End file.
